Before You Leave
Re: Mike Bickle, et. al.
Another evangelical, pseudo-pentecostal scandal, right in line with Carl Lentz, Mark Driscoll, and Ted Haggard.
If you’re angry, you have every right to be—angry with Mike Bickle, angry for the alleged victims. Anger makes sense; no one should tell you otherwise.
I am not angry. I am, unfortunately, unsurprised. Not because I knew anything about Mike Bickle or had some sort of notion about him, but because I’ve been in the church my whole life and nothing surprises me anymore, which isn’t to say that I’m some sort of saint without blemish. It’s just that sin is insidious and we all grapple with it, even the supposed best of us, though I hope by this time that we’ve learned ministry size and influence scope are not markers of “best.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve been intimate to this kind of situation before; more than a decade ago, one of my lead pastors—a man who was kind to me, poured into me, and mentored me—decided he wanted to leave his wife and be with his secretary. He tried to tell me and the church that God told him to do it. He was quickly removed by the board, thank God, and I’d learned enough to know better than to heed that sort of utter nonsense.
I’m reasonably close to the Mike Bickle situation, now. I have a good number of friends and colleagues who are current or former IHOPKC staffers, as do many church leaders here in greater Kansas City. IHOP’s influence is ubiquitous here, and I should say that the influence is good, on the whole—leaders intensely focused on prayer will rarely be a bad influence. Those staffers are earnest, kind, steady people who passionately love Jesus and the work of Jesus, and they wouldn’t be who they are without the influence of Mike Bickle, which is the painful paradox of this and similar situations—we are led by people who are sometimes deeply flawed and for whatever reason will not confess and repent.
However, in addition to my friends at IHOP, I have other friends who’ve had enough. This is the last straw for them. Mike Bickle has pushed them over the edge from questioning their faith and their church-filled upbringing into a full-blown descent into agnosticism or atheism. At the very least, they no longer trust the church.
I’d like to say that I understand that sentiment, too. It would be easier to just not do this , to just live as a peaceable citizen who didn’t have to get up early on Sundays anymore.
As such I’d like to share a statement that has kept me around:
We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence as the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and was made human.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried.
The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again with glory
to judge the living and the dead.
His kingdom will never end.And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life.
He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
He spoke through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and to life in the world to come.Amen.
If you’re not familiar with it, that’s the whole of the Nicene Creed.
It is not scripture, but it is the definitive statement of scriptural orthodoxy concerning Christ, the nature of his divinity, and the purpose of his life, death, and resurrection.
Mike Bickle is not mentioned anywhere in that statement, nor is Mark Driscoll, Carl Lentz, Ted Haggard, Ravi Zacharias, or all the other “great” leaders who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
My faith is in Jesus, not those men or the nuances of their teaching, and my faith is in Jesus because I have experienced firsthand the presence and work of Jesus as described in scripture and so eloquently summarized by the above creed, which means that I don’t need any of those men, ultimately. I have learned from them (certainly, what not to do) and I am thankful for any good influence they’ve had in my life, but they are not Jesus, who is the head of the church.
That’s why I’m still here, why I didn’t abandon ship when my own pastor so fantastically failed and tried to bring the whole church down with him, and Jesus is why I will remain.
Take that for what it’s worth.
Love it Joseph. Faith is rooted in our Lord, nothing further than that.